02 February 2018

The House Intel Committee Memo and the White House Letter

By Robert Willmann

Here are the White House letter about the memorandum of 18 January 2018 from the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and the memo itself that were released today.

White House Counsel Donald McGahn II dances around the delicate and not entirely clear issue of exactly what the legal grounds are for making information classified and unclassified and who in the federal government can do it. He opts for a common idea in favor of the executive branch and mentions executive order 13526, which I noted in a comment the other day.

He and President Trump have made it easy for everyone by saying, "... the President has authorized the declassification of the Memorandum".

Comments

Here are the White House letter about the memorandum of 18 January 2018 from the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and the memo itself that were released today.

White House Counsel Donald McGahn II dances around the delicate and not entirely clear issue of exactly what the legal grounds are for making information classified and unclassified and who in the federal government can do it. He opts for a common idea in favor of the executive branch and mentions executive order 13526, which I noted in a comment the other day.

He and President Trump have made it easy for everyone by saying, "... the President has authorized the declassification of the Memorandum".